Obama to get earful on fracking - EPA hands over first batch of data to Vitter - Sierra hits Duke on coal

Text Size

OBAMA TO GET EARFUL ON FRACKING: Anti-fracking protesters plan to give President Barack Obama some company this week on his education tour of upstate New York and Pennsylvania. “We will chase him around the state,” said Isaac Silberman-Gorn, an organizer with Citizen Action, part of a roughly 200-group coalition called New Yorkers Against Fracking that is organizing a series of protests. “He’s promised all of these great things for climate change, but he’s pushing a plan that is really at odds with that.” Meanwhile, landowners who support fracking will show up at New York state appearances to put pressure on Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has long been weighing whether to allow the practice in the state, one petroleum industry representative said. Talia Buford has more: http://politico.pro/14WRvvx

Empire state of mind: Fracking is not an issue with a clear winning side in the region, according to Siena College, which regularly polls New York residents on fracking and other matters. Their most recent poll, conducted Aug. 4-7, found that 42 percent of respondents oppose the state letting fracking move forward in parts of upstate New York, while 41 percent opposed it and 12 percent didn't know or had no opinion. The two sides haven’t been too far off from one another since at least August 2012, according to Siena polling data.

EPA HANDS OVER FIRST BATCH OF DATA TO VITTER: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member David Vitter says his office has received its first data cache from EPA since an agreement with the agency allowing Administrator Gina McCarthy's nomination to move forward. Vitter and some other Republican lawmakers have been after data underlying two major air pollution health studies that provide the justification for several major air regulations. The data EPA had not provided to the committees was in the possession of non-federal researchers, and removing identifying information without compromising the data is a difficult task, agency officials have said. "EPA has obtained what appears to be a portion of the Pope 2009 study that was requested, as well as the Lepeule 2012," Republican committee spokesman Luke Bolar told POLITICO. “However, they have only provided the Pope 2009 data to the committee which we are reviewing,” he said.

COUNTDOWN CLOCK FOR NRC’S NEXT MOVE ON YUCCA: The federal appeals court decision last week that instructed the NRC to reconstitute its review of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project has started a countdown clock for requiring the agency to begin putting that process back together by Sept. 3. Last Tuesday, a split Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel approved a rarely granted writ of mandamus, which will force the NRC to start taking action within 21 days of the Aug. 13 ruling. Even so, the agency and the Justice Department still have a narrow window to challenge the decision. Darius Dixon explains what to watch for: http://politi.co/1doXXwe

**A message from POWERJobs: New jobs on our radar this week: State Outreach Director at Nuclear Energy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor at The Nature Conservancy and Manager/Director of Government Affairs at American Land Title Association. Interested? Apply to these jobs and more at POWERJobs.com; finally, a career site made for YOU!**

MORE ON THE IPCC REPORT: ME first wrote about this yesterday, and now Andrew Restuccia has new details for Pros on the leaked draft of a forthcoming climate change science report out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Various scenarios used in the report put sea-level rise in the latter part of this century at 0.9 to 2.7 feet. And in 2100, that range could be as high as 1.7 to 3.2 feet. A rise of that magnitude could cause significant damage to low-lying cities and regions. By the end of the century, the report says, sea-level rise will occur in more than 95 percent of the ocean. Andrew lays it all out for Pros: http://politico.pro/12kg3dY

GUY VS. SPY: HORNER WANTS NSA TO FORK OVER LISA JACKSON’S EMAILS: A conservative gadfly who has made a crusade of uncovering embarrassing emails at the EPA wants to tap a new potential evidence trove: the NSA’s electronic snooping program. Attorney Chris Horner has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the NSA to turn over any information it might have gleaned from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s personal Verizon email account. The data could buttress critics’ accusations that Jackson and other top environmental regulators have routinely used private channels to discuss public business. Horner dismisses any concerns that this might violate Jackson’s privacy, saying the NSA has made it clear that it doesn’t put much stock in those kinds of worries. Erica Martinson has more: http://politi.co/12jxD1U

OHIO ENVIRO REGULATOR ALLEGEDLY FORCED OUT BY COAL PRESSURE — REPORT: Via the Huffington Post: “Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has forced out the head of a key division of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in response to pressure from the coal industry, according to an email obtained by The Huffington Post. George Elmaraghy, the chief of the division of surface water at OEPA, told staff in the email that the governor’s office and the director of the agency had asked him to resign, effective Sept. 13, 2013. In the letter, Elmaraghy cited ‘considerable pressure from the coal companies over the last year’ demanding that his staff ‘accommodate the industry’s needs by issuing permits that may have a negative impact on Ohio's streams and wetlands and violate state and federal laws.’” HuffPo: http://huff.to/16qatYk

PUMP UPDATE: The national average for a gallon of gasoline slipped again over the last week to land at $3.55 yesterday, according to the Energy Information Administration. That's down slightly from $3.561 the previous Monday. The peak this summer, according to EIA, was $3.682 on July 22, while the highest point this year was $3.784 on Feb. 25.

AD WATCH — SIERRA PRESSES DUKE ON COAL: The Sierra Club has begun running ads pressuring Duke Energy to move off of coal at its Asheville generating station, a 376-megawatt plant that is the largest electric generator in western North Carolina, according to the company. The plant is also home to two coal ash waste ponds that take up about 90 acres near the French Broad River, a source of concern for environmentalists. Sierra is running ads on area TV stations, radio station, on the Asheville Citizen-Times' website and in print in the Mountain Xpress newspaper. The TV ad: http://youtu.be/Ajf568glJz0

— Sierra wouldn't say how much it's spending on the campaign, but disclosed the ad will run on TV 400 times between yesterday and Saturday, when the group is organizing a rally at the site featuring actor Ian Somerhalder (CONNNEX), Sierra's Beyond Coal campaign director Mary Anne Hitt, Mayor Terry Bellamy and others. Info: http://bit.ly/14WysSb

More on coal ash ponds in North Carolina: Coal ash ponds are a long-running sticking point in the area; the state Division of Water Quality filed a lawsuit against Duke Energy earlier this year in Wake County Superior Court over alleged groundwater contamination from the ponds in Asheville and another facility. The lawsuit claims that chemicals from the ponds, including thallium, boron and selenium, are making their way into the nearby river. And just on Friday, another state agency sued Duke again over alleged violations at 12 more sites. More on that from the Citizen-Times: http://avlne.ws/17y8u37

— And in Illinois, state officials believe a coal ash waste pond at a shut-down coal-fired power plant is leaching contaminants into the groundwater and potentially the Middle Ford River. News-Gazette: http://bit.ly/14Pc4TH

ARKANSAS AG HITS EXXON OVER LEGAL MOVES: ExxonMobil has been wrongly differentiating its treatment of people affected by the Mayflower, Ark., pipeline oil spill last March, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said yesterday on “The Diane Rehm Show.” “Well, I've been rather critical of Exxon throughout this process because I have recognized that despite their rhetoric of trying to help, they clearly couch it in very cautious terms that are designed to protect their legal positions,” McDaniel said. The problem, he said, is that some homes were evacuated right away in a “snap decision by inexperienced state and local officials,” and Exxon is now giving less support to those who weren’t evacuated right away.

“In other words, if you were evacuated, your legal rights would be X, and if you lived across the street or next door to an evacuated home, your rights would be Y,” McDaniel said. “Unfortunately, Exxon has treated it that way. So I've been very dissatisfied with the very harsh — and I've even called it coldhearted at times — litigation stances that they've taken with folks who did nothing but wake up on Good Friday and find an oil spill in their driveway.” Listen to the show: http://bit.ly/14Okc6V

QUICK HITS

— Former EPA chief Lisa Jackson has joined the governing board of Tulane University. AP: http://bit.ly/14Wwcds

— President Obama is considering Leslie Caldwell, who headed up the task force that investigated Enron, to be the Justice Department's criminal chief, sources tell Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/16Y279p

— Sen. Martin Heinrich is asking the Interior Department to approve the 515-mile SunZia transmission line crossing much of New Mexico. Alamogordo Daily News: http://bit.ly/1d18xL5

— The acting administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration says the agency's hiring problems run deeper than was originally reported and will take "an enormous effort" to correct, reports the Oregonian: http://bit.ly/14Tuhnf

— Data centers are still using a lot of power from fossil sources, Slashdot writes: http://bit.ly/1cVzNeN

— Cobalt International Energy saw its stock drop more than 15 percent yesterday after the company said it hit a dry well in 5,300 feet of water off the coast of Louisiana. Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/170y8j0

THAT’S ALL FOR ME. Read the credits in the style of an Italian chef who’s run out of meatballs.

**A message from POWERJobs: Tap into the power of POWERJOBS for the newest job opportunities in the Washington area from the area’s top employers, including Evolver, The Boeing Company, TASC and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Powered by names you trust — POLITICO, WTOP, WJLA/ABC-TV, NewsChannel 8 and Federal News Radio- POWERJOBS is the ultimate career site with more than 2 million job searches and nearly 17,000 applications submitted this year so far. Connect through Facebook or LinkedIn, search jobs by industry and set up job-specific email alerts using POWERJobs.com, the site for Washington’s top talent.**